The Man With No Heart
by Rhijana
Summary: Towards the end of the events of Operation Bumblebee, Starscream meets an unusual young man of interest to MECH. Not exactly a planned, ongoing story- think of it as a series of ficlets within the same crossover continuity.
1. Kapital Eins

As the MECH soldiers surrounded him, it began to dawn on Starscream that he might have screwed up. Again.

He should have tried to defend himself, but his mind had gone curiously blank. What could he do? He'd failed, and when a MECH soldier raised a shock-gun towards him, all Starscream could do was wait for the inevitable consequences.

But before he even had time to flinch, one of the humans jumped on the MECH soldier and yanked their arm away. The MECH soldier shouted and knocked the human- it was unmasked, like Silas- to the ground.

As the other MECH soldiers were distracted by the fight, Starscream felt his mind go into overdrive. With a swift kick, he swept several of the MECH soldiers aside and while they tried to sort themselves out, he scooped up the unmasked human in one hand and ran into the forest. He paused only when he'd gotten several meters away, and fired a missile towards the group.

Without waiting to see if he'd hit his target Starscream transformed, tossing the human into his cockpit as he did, and flew off.

He kept going until he'd put a good distance between himself and MECH. Once he'd been flying for several minutes without being shot at, Starscream slowed down and tried to process what he'd done.

He had a _human _in his _cockpit_. A tiny, oozing, furless ape _thing_ and a former member of the group that had just tried to betray him. After he'd taught them about Cybertronian biology and given them a sample of his energon and had even helped them locate more and regaled them with tales of his exploits and defended their pathetic little project from Autobots, they'd tried to _rip him open for spare parts_!

He stewed in the injustice of it all for a few more moments before he remembered why he'd picked up the organic in his cockpit in the first place. It had tried to stop that MECH soldier from shooting Starscream, even though it had been unarmed and outnumbered. And Starscream had no idea why. What did he have that this human considered worth such a risk?

Was it even still alive? He couldn't feel it moving around, which was less of a relief when he realized the organic inside him might be dead.

The idea disgusted Starscream enough that he decided to stop and land on a nearby cliff. He transformed back into his robot mode, landing with a thud on the hard ground. After taking a moment to scan the skies, just in case MECH had sent helicopters after him, he opened his cockpit and gingerly extracted the human from inside himself.

The human was pale in colouration, with white hair, light skin, and a white shirt that was too large for it. It wore pants and shoes that looked like those the MECH soldiers had been wearing, but Starscream began to wonder if it really was one of them. He'd seen a few of the MECH soldiers escorting the human about, but it hadn't said or done anything until it attacked the soldier that had threatened him. Before that moment Starscream hadn't given the human much thought, as it had seemed neither dangerous nor useful.

Currently, the human was regarding him with a worryingly blank look.

"You," Starscream spat out. "Are you dead, fleshling?"

"No," the human said, sounding indifferent about it.

Well that was a start. "Why did you attack that other human?"

The human seemed to consider this. "He was going to hurt you," it eventually said, speaking in the same indifferent tone.

The human's answer was... both unexpected, and unhelpful. "Yes, I knew that much! Why did you try to _stop _him?" He added, "Not that I needed help from a fleshling."

The human regarded him blankly (Primus, were all humans this stupid looking up close?) and eventually said, "I don't know."

Starscream would have been quite happy to say he didn't have much experience with humans, but even he knew the average human was more sapient than _this_. Had its neural net been damaged when that MECH soldier hit it?

He held the creature closer to his face. Starscream wasn't sure if its leg was supposed to be bent like that, there was a noticeable rip in its shirt, and- ugh! Its head was bleeding and the red ooze was mixed in with its hair. Starscream thrust his hand away from his face, and as the human made no effort to resist the momentum, it rolled off of his hand. For a single alarming moment he thought it was about to die, but he managed to catch it with his other hand.

"You- you pathetic wretch!" Starscream said. "Have you no sense of self-preservation?"

"I don't know," the human said.

Unsure of what else to do, Starscream glared at the human. "What are you?"

"...Mytho. My name is Mytho." He continued to give Starscream a blank stare. "Silas called you Starscream."

"Correct. Were you one of his troops?"

"Not really." Mytho hesitated, then added, "He said I was... the result of an experiment."

Starscream's eyebrows raised. "And this experiment was...?"

"I don't know."

"Did it have anything to do with that mockery of a Cybertronian they were trying to build?"

"I don't know."

"Do you know _anything_?"

"Probably."

Starscream let out an irritated sigh. "You are the most idiotic human I have ever had the displeasure of speaking to."

"Do you speak to a lot of humans?"

Starscream's eyes narrowed, but Mytho still seemed indifferent. "Thankfully, I don't," Starscream snapped. "Now stop saying 'I don't know' when I ask you a question!"

"Okay."

"Do you know what MECH was planning on doing with you?"

"I..." Mytho shrugged.

"How long have you been with them?"

"About a month."

"And what happened in that month?"

Mytho leaned his head back and stared at the nighttime sky. "I woke up somewhere cold and dark. The ground was hard. Then I saw some moving lights. They were being held by men in masks. The MECH soldiers. Silas was with them, and he said that... the experiment had worked. He asked if I could understand him, and when I said yes he kept asking more questions."

He looked back at Starscream. "They did tests on me with these strange machines. And they had a doctor cut me open so they could look inside me. There were always soldiers guarding me, so they could make sure I ate and slept and didn't run away. When they weren't paying attention to me, they were experimenting with more of their machines. And then you were there."

"Mm. Well, consider my rescue as thanks for your good-willed, if entirely unnecessary, attempt to help me." Starscream held Mytho up to his face again, ignoring his disgust at the red ooze in Mytho's hair. "If MECH was so interested in you, perhaps you're not as useless as you seem."

Mytho said nothing.

"Let me make you an offer. I will discover what MECH intended to do with you and keep you from getting yourself killed. And in return you will obey me unquestioningly."

Mytho continued to say nothing.

"Do we have an understanding, fleshling?"

"...Sure."

"Good. Just remember that if you fail to uphold your end of the bargain, your punishment shall be swift and merciless." He brought his hand down to his cockpit and opened it up. "You may stay in there for now, but do not touch _anything_."

"I can't."

"Why not? I assure you, I'm no more thrilled at the idea than you are!"

"My leg won't move."

"...Couldn't you have mentioned that earlier?!"

"Probably."

"Oh," Starscream muttered, "I can tell this is going to be _fun_."


	2. Kapitel Zwei

It had been over twelve hours since Starscream had first retrieved Mytho from MECH, and it occurred to Starscream that the human would need to be fed. He expressed his concern in his typical manner:

"Do you require sustenance, fleshling?"

Mytho, who had said nothing since Starscream had shoved him back into his cockpit, responded in _his _typical manner: "Probably."

Starscream made an aggravated noise. "I see you're as brainless as ever. Very well, I will arrange your next meal."

They flew onwards in silence, until Starscream spotted a highway leading towards a moderately-sized city. He paused, hovering overhead and examining the vehicles driving by.

Frag. Starscream usually kept an eye out for things like blue motorcycles, custom muscle cars, ambulances, and others of their ilk, but up until this moment he had never needed to consider vehicles as a human utility. Humans used vehicles to deliver supplies, food was a necessary supply, he could figure out that much. But how was he to tell which vehicles carried organic sustenance and which ones carried... whatever else it was humans needed?

The answer came to him in a stroke of convenience, as a truck drove by with a picture of a loaf of bread printed on its side.

"You had better appreciate this," Starscream muttered, as he began to tail the bread truck. Mytho made a noncommittal noise.

Starscream followed the truck through the city for several minutes, wondering how best to go about things. He wasn't worried about civilian humans harming him if he caught their attention, but it could make life harder for him if the Autobots or Decepticons got wind of an F16 jet robbing a bread truck.

It would have been simpler just to ditch the human somewhere- but not yet, not unless it proved to be a major hindrance. There didn't seem to be anything special about it beyond an alarming level of passivity and an odd hair colour, but MECH had been keeping it around for _some _reason and Starscream was curious and, though he'd never mention it out loud, in desperate need of allies.

So he continued to follow the truck until it finally came to a stop behind a grocery store. Starscream waited patiently as the driver exited the vehicle, greeted some of the store's workers, and went to open up the back of the truck. Then, Starscream transformed and landed behind them.

The humans whirled around at the noise. "Surrender your cargo, or prepare to face my wrath!" Starscream punctuated his statement by transforming his hands into blasters and aiming them at the humans. As dramatic speeches went it wasn't Starscream's best, but it did have the gratifying effect of making the humans freeze in place with their jaws dropped.

"Now- step away from the vehicle. Go on. Before I get impatient." Starscream pointed one of his blasters at the driver, who started to edge away. "That's it," Starscream said. "Obey me and I might let you live."

He waited until the human had gotten a decent distance from the truck, then knelt down and allowed one of his hands to transform back. He reached inside and pulled out a tray of bread loaves. It seemed tiny in his enormous claws, but Starscream suspected it would be difficult to fit the entire tray inside his cockpit alongside Mytho. He settled for picking up a few loaves between his finger tips, and tossed them into his cockpit.

This had the inadvertent side effect of revealing Mytho to the humans. Alarmed by the sight of another human within the "machine's stomach," they screamed and ran away.

The humans looked quite ridiculous with their little legs pumping frantically, achieving speeds that even the slowest Cybertronian could have outran in their sleep. Starscream allowed himself a brief chuckle at the sight, then transformed and flew off before he could gather any more attention.

After a bit more flying around, Starscream managed to find an empty parking lot in an isolated part of town. He slowed down for a landing, allowing himself to relax.

"Well skinjob? Do you appreciate the sustenance I have obtained for you? I must admit, it was almost disappointing how easy it was. But I was Megatron's first lieutenant, after all. It's hardly a surprise that they would cower at the sight of me."

"Starscream, you stole these."

It was difficult for Starscream to bristle while he was still in jet form, yet he somehow managed. "Yes, I did! What of it?! You would starve to death otherwise."

Mytho said nothing.

"You're an ungrateful little fleshling, aren't you? I rescued you from MECH, and it would be all too easy for me to return you. They'd be far more useful to me than you would be."

"I'm sorry, Starscream. Please don't take me back to MECH," Mytho said. His words were pacifying, though his tone remained irritatingly detached.

"Fine. I shall keep you under my wing for a bit longer. But do not disrespect me again! And in the future, you shall address me as 'Lord Starscream,' 'my Lord,' 'master,' or possibly 'sir' if we're in a hurry. Is that understood, fleshling?"

"Yes Lord Starscream."

The title mollified Starscream for the time being. "Good. You can eat now, by the way. But do not leave any crumbs inside me, or I shall punish you most severely."

"Yes Lord Starscream."

At least the human was obedient.


End file.
